On December 19 we will discuss…
Winter Garden: A powerful, heartbreaking novel that illuminates the intricate mother-daughter bond and explores the enduring links between the present and the past.
On November 21 we will discuss…
Maria: A tale of love, loss, and the difficult choices that we are often forced to make, Maria is a powerful reminder that the truth is usually more complicated—and certainly more compelling—than the stories immortalized by Hollywood.
On October 17 we will discuss…
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek: is a novel following Cussy Mary, a packhorse librarian and her quest to bring books to the Appalachian community she loves.
On September 19 we will discuss…
The Briar Club: Washington, DC, 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss, whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; policeman’s daughter Nora, who finds herself entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Beatrice, whose career has come to an end along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.
On August 15 we will discuss…
Hidden Life of Cecily Larson: In 1924, four-year-old Cecily Larson’s mother reluctantly drops her off at an orphanage in Chicago, promising to be back once she’s made enough money to support both Cecily and herself. But she never returns, and shortly after high-spirited Cecily turns seven, she is sold to a traveling circus to perform as the “little sister” to glamorous bareback rider Isabelle DuMonde. With Isabelle and the rest of the circus, Cecily finally feels she’s found the family she craves. But as the years go by, the cracks in her little world begin to show. And when teenage Cecily meets and falls in love with a young roustabout named Lucky, she finds her life thrown onto an entirely unexpected—and dangerous—course.
On July 18 we will discuss…
Westing Game: is a novel by the French novelist and philosophy teacher Muriel Barbery. The book follows events in the life of a concierge, Renée Michel, whose deliberately concealed intelligence is uncovered by an unstable but intellectually precocious girl named Paloma Josse.
On May 16 we will discuss…
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle: is a breathlessly addictive mystery that follows one man’s race to find a killer, with an astonishing time-turning twist that means nothing and no one are quite what they seem.
On April 18 we will discuss…
Beloved: Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.
On March 21 we will discuss…
The Reading List: An unforgettable and heartwarming debut about how a chance encounter with a list of library books helps forge an unlikely friendship between two very different people in a London suburb.
On February 15 we will discuss…
Lincoln Highway: In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett’s intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden’s car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett’s future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction—to the City of New York.
On January 18 we will discuss…
How the Penguins Saved Veronica: Eighty-five-year-old Veronica McCreedy is estranged from her family and wants to find a worthwhile cause to leave her fortune to. When she sees a documentary about penguins being studied in Antarctica, she tells the scientists she’s coming to visit–and won’t take no for an answer. Shortly after arriving, she convinces the reluctant team to rescue an orphaned baby penguin. He becomes part of life at the base, and Veronica’s heart starts to open.
December 14, we are excited to discuss a local author, Aaron Qualio’s two novels. The author will join us with insights to the books.
Mystery in the Hill: A small Wisconsin town is shaken to its core when four high school boys stumble upon an unexpected discovery. As past and present secrets are exposed, more unsolved mysteries are revealed, leading to more danger than anyone could have ever imagined.
The Heir: An evil, cruel young man takes over the family business after the mysterious death of his father. As the company and his hometown are essentially one in the same, he uses his newfound power and wealth to do what he wants, when he wants, without any consequences. Now, the man’s younger brother must save the company and the village he loves from his tyrannical brother.
On October 12 we will discuss All Adults Here by Emma Straub.
When Astrid Strick witnesses a school bus accident in the center of town, it jostles loose a repressed memory from her young parenting days decades earlier. Suddenly, Astrid realizes she was not quite the parent she thought she’d been to her three, now-grown children. But to what consequence?
On June 8 we will discuss Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz
When editor Susan Ryeland is given the manuscript of Alan Conway’s latest novel, she has no reason to think it will be much different from any of his others. After working with the bestselling crime writer for years, she’s intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pünd, who solves mysteries disturbing sleepy English villages. An homage to queens of classic British crime such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, Alan’s traditional formula has proved hugely successful. So successful that Susan must continue to put up with his troubling behavior if she wants to keep her job.
Conway’s latest tale has Atticus Pünd investigating a murder at Pye Hall, a local manor house. Yes, there are dead bodies and a host of intriguing suspects, but the more Susan reads, the more she’s convinced that there is another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript: one of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition, and murder.
Masterful, clever, and relentlessly suspenseful, Magpie Murders is a deviously dark take on vintage English crime fiction in which the reader becomes the detective.
On May 11, we will discuss The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont.
What drives someone to murder? What will someone do in the name of love? What kind of crime can someone never forgive? Nina de Gramont’s brilliant, unforgettable novel explores these questions and more.
On April 11, we will discuss An American Marriage by Tayari Jones. This stirring love story is a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look deep into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward—with hope and pain—into the future.
On February 9 we will discuss The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown. Out of the depths of the Depression comes an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate account of how nine working-class boys from the American West showed the world at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin what true grit really meant.
On January 12 we will discuss This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger. 1932, Minnesota—the Lincoln School is a pitiless place where hundreds of Native American children, forcibly separated from their parents, are sent to be educated. It is also home to an orphan named Odie O’Banion, a lively boy whose exploits earn him the superintendent’s wrath. Forced to flee, he and his brother Albert, their best friend Mose, and a brokenhearted little girl named Emmy steal away in a canoe, heading for the mighty Mississippi and a place to call their own.
On October 13 we will discuss The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict. The remarkable, little-known story of Belle da Costa Greene, J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian—who became one of the most powerful women in New York despite the dangerous secret she kept in order to make her dreams come true, from New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict and acclaimed author Victoria Christopher Murray.
On March 10 we will discuss Rose Code by Kate Quinn. The Rose Code tells the story of female code breakers at Bletchley Park during WWII and their top secret jobs that they had.
Please call the library at 459-2923 or email Erin at coppersmithe@kohler.k12.wi.us to reserve your copy.
On February 10 we will discuss State of Terror by Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny. State of Terror centers on a female secretary of state as she races against time to out-maneuver international terrorists and homegrown traitors.
Please call the library at 459-2923 or email Erin at coppersmithe@kohler.k12.wi.us to reserve your copy.
On October 14 we will discuss American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins. American Dirt is a social issues thriller. It tells the story of a mother and son, Lydia and Luca, fleeing their home in Acapulco, Mexico, for the US after the rest of their family is murdered by a drug cartel.
Please call the library at 459-2923 or email Erin at coppersmithe@kohler.k12.wi.us to reserve your copy.
On June 10 we will discuss Four Winds by Kristin Hannah. This book is “a powerful American epic about love and heroism and hope, set during the Great Depression, a time when the country was in crisis and at war with itself, when millions were out of work and even the land seemed to have turned against them.” -Amazon
Please call the library at 459-2923 or email Erin at coppersmithe@kohler.k12.wi.us to reserve your copy.
In May we will start our club back up after a year-long break. I’m certainly looking forward to seeing all of you!
On May 13 we will be discussing Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward. It is about a family’s dynamics in the fictional town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. The novel received overwhelmingly positive reviews, and was named by The New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of 2017.
Please call the library at 459-2923 or email Erin at coppersmithe@kohler.k12.wi.us to reserve your copy.